Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Caltech has a distinguishing track record of innovation—from the automated DNA sequencer and the integrated circuit design behind computer chips, to current work on novel treatments for neurological disorders and green methods for converting plant waste into fuels. Your support can help Caltech scholars translate basic scientific research into new technologies and enterprises with potential to benefit humankind.

Osman Kibar (BS ’93) wants to turn back time. His business, Samumed, makes drug therapies that may reboot the body’s capacity to renew damaged or diseased tissue. If these efforts pay off in full, society will see cures for everything from baldness to cancer. According to Kibar, this ambitious endeavor benefits from a little bit of Caltech thinking.

In the human gastrointestinal tract, bacteria can outnumber human cells 10 to one. In other words, on a cellular level we are 90 percent bacteria. Yet until the early 2000s, microbiologists focused predominantly on microbes that cause disease rather than on those that are harmless or even beneficial.

About a third of American adults suffer from cardiovascular diseases, which are the underlying cause of about one in three deaths in the U.S. In 2010, cardiovascular diseases generated direct and indirect costs of approximately $503 billion. New techniques to detect these diseases early and provide ongoing health information could significantly reduce such unacceptable human […]

The discovery of new materials with novel properties often spurs leaps in science and technology. One of the most promising advances under way now is the creation of “tunable” materials. Caltech aerospace engineer Dennis Kochmann, who works on the modeling and fabrication of novel materials, is using Caltech Innovation Initiative support to design materials whose […]